In a follow-up to the recent controversy over No-Match letters, a federal appeals Court in California has ordered re-instatement and awarded back pay to workers who were dismissed over discrepancies in their social security numbers. The Court stated the issue bluntly: "This case boils down to a single issue: whether the SSA's no-match letter -- and the fired employees' responses -- put [the employer] on constructive notice that it was employing undocumented workers."
The employer received a no-match letter from the Social Security Administration that reported discrepancies between the social security numbers reported by the employer and the numbers in SSA's data base. Upon receipt of the no-match letter, the company gave the employees 3 days to correct the mismatches and fired 33 employees a week to 10 days later, if they failed to comply.
The Court's decision effectively holds that no-match letters do not effectively provide "constructive notice" to employers of any immigration violations. The Court concluded that "Constructive notice . . requires positive information of a worker's undocumented status."
The issue of no-match letters took on heightened importance last summer, when DHS announced that employers would be required to respond to those letters by requiring verification of employment authorization by the affected worker or dismiss the worker. The issue has remained bogged down in litigation for the past year.
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